


Nothing Like Schrödinger's Cat

by facetofcathy



Category: Leverage
Genre: 100-1000 Words, Bisexual Character, Multi, Poly, Sex Positive, Threesome, sexisnottheenemy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-12
Updated: 2010-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-07 05:09:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facetofcathy/pseuds/facetofcathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is my story for the <a href="http://villainny.livejournal.com/1420948.html">sex is not the enemy fic/artathon.</a></p><p>Links to the erotic art photo prompt:</p><p><a href="http://sexisnottheenemy.tumblr.com/post/107757658/mooseygoodness-via-www-ludovicgoubet-com">At sexisnottheenemy Blog</a>
<br/><a href="http://www.ludovicgoubet.com/ludo-erotism-3.html">Original Source</a></p><p><q>My kind of photo.<br/>When the modeles just begin to completly forget that I am present. I just love love.</q></p><p>The words above are the comments of the photographer, and they got me thinking about the way I (we?) usually write about sex as an almost out of body experience.  The photo is such a tangle of people that I'm not even sure how many are there, and that got me thinking about discrete identities and bodies, and this was the result.  I think I wrote the negative image of this photo.  This is not my usual kind of story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Like Schrödinger's Cat

Money is two things at once. Parker has always understood this. It is cool metal and crinkly paper or slick plastic, and it used to be wood or bone or beads or shells. Diamonds are almost money now, it's just that people don't quite realize it yet. The second thing that money is, that diamonds are, that coins are, that paper is, that pixelated numbers from the other plane of existence that only Hardison can visit are, is a figment of the imagination, an unreal thing, a symbol, an idea that changes and shifts with the mind that holds it. She likes money better when it's real.

Parker thinks maybe women are two thing at once too. If Eliot touches her skin, like he is right now, if his fingers stroke her body, that is not so different from the shift of coins through her fingers or the heft of a stack of paper. She is a real thing, solid and whole and finite and one thing. Parker, in the flesh. If Alec puts his lips on her, like he is now; if he touches her, tastes her skin, scrapes his teeth against her body, she is heat and salt and muscle and bone, one real, alive thing that he can measure with his mouth, that Eliot can weigh with his hands. She knows she is this real thing when she is naked with them, like they are now.

When she is in the world, not naked here, but clothed out there, she thinks maybe she is not a real thing. Not flesh at all. She is an idea woman then, an unreal thing that winks in and out of existence, changing and altering, morphing from one idea to another as she passes from mind to mind to mind. She didn't always know this, but she sees it now.

She sees that she is not the same idea woman in Eliot's mind as she is in Hardison's. She doesn't know exactly who they see in their minds when they are out there in the world; but she knows that money is not the same for them, that Alec uses it to measure himself, that Eliot uses it to be apart; and this, she thinks, is proof that she is right about how all this works.

She is the same flesh when they both touch her, like they are now, when she feels Alec's hands on her. When the brush of the hair on Eliot's legs or his arms raises goosebumps, she is one whole thing with edges that don't move or change. When they look at her, when she is disguised by her clothes, she splits in two, or maybe three, she thinks now, while she runs her hand against the grain of Eliot's leg to hear him grumble. Perhaps she is an idea woman of her own, not flesh, not real, but some chimera inside her own mind. She is stuck on this thought, and she stops still, searching her mind for the truth of that, and she finds the idea woman there, not the solid flesh that can feel and can touch, but a thing of insubstantial thought. She is not sure when this happened.

Sophie, she thinks, Sophie would understand this. Sophie can make other people see the idea that she wants. She can go to that other plane, sort of like Hardison does; she can manipulate the minds of others, and chose the idea they see. And Parker wants to learn this, wants to control the image and the idea as much as the flesh, but she can't stop knowing that the clothes are a disguise, a camouflage, that the paint on her face is not her skin, that the body they see isn't real. She likes being real, like she is now when she feels heat and sweat and the stretch of muscles and the bright diamond spark of pleasure. Like she feels when Alec puts his mouth to her clit, or when she puts hers to Eliot's dick. The tastes are truthful; the scents are honest; the flush of arousal is real like the dust and decay smell that paper money has—a scent like no other.

She is solidly herself when Eliot fucks her or Alec does, or she does them, as she is now with one of them inside her. She had closed her eyes, let her attention wander away, and she doesn't know which one it is, but she can feel the fullness inside her and hands on her body, her breast and her hip. She looks and sees Alec over her, smiling, and she has to kiss him, taste his lips, his mouth. And the hand on her breast is Eliot's then, the hard press against her side, his body, and she flexes up meeting Alec's thrusts, sliding against Eliot's body as he moves his hand down to her clit. And it is the same Parker they touch, inside and out; the same Parker that comes from their touch within and without.

She thinks that it's right that Alec gets heavier against her after he comes, that his weight sinks into hers, and they all become more solid together, her limbs sinking into the bed, full and weighty and satisfied with Eliot still pressing tight to her, like he does, solid flesh and muscle and bone. There is something in the way she sinks into the bed, like gravity has her in its grip, that is still the same as flying on a wire. Something fully real, and she smiles, imagining riding a zip line down a skyscraper naked. Imagines doing it not alone.

She slides her hand up and under the pillow and finds a scatter of coins, gold and silver and tarnished copper, and she lets them rest in her palm. She likes it better when its real.


End file.
